Now I’m not even for a minute going to act like I am any kind of authority on anything regarding music video trivia, I very rarely flip over to MTV and when it do what happens to be on is more often than not either:
a) a music video of some dime-a-dozen rapper singing about whores and blowing someone to shit, shortly before thanking god/showing his tattoo of god/thanking the lord jesus christ for this chance to shine
b) ‘Yo Momma‘ - quite possibly the worst television show I have ever seen. If you ever wondered what testicular cancer would look like as moving images, this is it. I managed to stomach one episode of this hunking piece of shit just out of morbin curiousity and I can quite honestly say it was more painful than watching Lindsay Lohan’s Freaky Friday.
Wilmer Valdarama so desperately wants to be Ashton Kutcher and/or Black, except the way he tries to achieve both of these in one fell swoop compeltely renders the process inane when he tries to act hard while wearing a scarf and a plaid sweater vest. Note to Wilmer: You are not, nor will you ever be ’street’. My Little Pony is more ’street’ than you. You are a filthy rich hispanic actor who once dated Ashlee Simpson. You are not ’street’.
c) ‘Sweet 16‘ - wonderful, another show about brats who have to deal with the trials and tribulations of having too much money. This is a must see.
So anyway, I don’t get to see that many music videos. But that got me thinking, that probably means that most people my brother’s age have never ever seen the mother of all music videos - Thriller by Michael Jackson. It’s the story of Mike out on a date with some young lady, when suddenly…
Look at the state of that. That’s ridiculous, considering this was back in 1983. That’s some hot shit make-up. Anyone who has seen the video will appreciate the power of it, I’m gonna be honest, it will fuck you up. They could make the prequel to Silence of the Lambs, and it would just be a shot of a six year old Hannibal Lecter watching the Thriller music video and I would buy it.
Anyway, about a minute after that whole wearwolf thing and six years after she stops screaming, we find out that it’s actually just a movie that she and Michael are watching in the cinema. She doesn’t appreciate it too much and makes Michael - as all women invaribaly do - leave this awesome movie and walk her home.
Yeah, the movie where Michael Jackson (who’s right there with you) turns into a fictional wearwolf freaks you out, but you have absolutely no qualm with walking through an empty LA street past midnight.
Anyway, you know the drill, zombies rise from their graves and then - inspite of not being able to hold their limbs together and/or walk in a straight line - manage to form a perfect circle around Michael and his date. Then, in a camera dolly that would make Kubrick fawn, we see Michael is a zombie too. He then goes on to defy all logic by busting out some sweet dance moves.
Following on from this I cannot not mention probably the scariest contemporary music video(s): ‘Windowlicker‘ and ‘Come to Daddy‘, both by Aphex Twin, both directed by Chris Cunningham.
Cunningham is a make up genius. There is no doubt, and both of these videos still haunt me to this day, take a look at a shot for Come to Daddy:
Much of the video for this is basically those things chasing you down the street. Windowlicker is equally disturbing, it’s about these two black guys who roll down the street looking for some chicks, when they’re abducted by this limo full of girls. Anyway, someway and somehow all the girls’ faces are suddenly transformed into this grotesque version of this guy with a goatee. I’m not even going to post what is remotely close to being the horror of what happens in this video, just this picture, which is pretty bad, but nothing compared what really transpires towards the end:
A lot of people seem to think that the video ‘Evil’ by Interpol is scary. I dont think so at all, but I’m gonna take the chance to mention it because the band are one of my favourites, and the song is something I listen to a lot. Here’s what the video consists of:
Don’t get it personally.
The video ‘The Kill’ by 30 Seconds to Mars is pretty scary on two levels:
a) because it’s lifted the setting from one of the scariest films ever, The Shining and there is a fair amount of blood/dead bodies
b) because that he would take the time to make this self-indulgent video means that Jared Leto actually thinks people actually give a baker’s fuck about his music.
Here is a link to the video, you can pretty much be sure that your band is a piece of shit and you are completely self deluded when considering yourself a rock-star, when of all those comments I can see, not one of them says anything remotely positive about the song, and at least three of them sport the linguistic magnificence of a crayon, the best they are able to muster being:
“HE IS HOTT HOTT HOTT!”
or my personal favourite, (in response to the band’s music video):
” did u know that Jared Let is 35 years old?? old and hot!”
I would love to see what would happen in some alternate universe where Jared Leto hadn’t done well in Requiem for a Dream and become a bonafide star, hence being able to lend his starpower to his shitty band. It’s ridiculous how some of my favourite bands like Halloween Alaska and Bell X1 get absolutely no love, where as this piece of shit cookie-cutter goth puke rapes the airwaves because it stars that guy who was so hot they cut his scene out of Phone Booth.
Anyway, yeah that concludes that. A song to listen to, you ask? ‘Next to you’ by Bell X1
